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Month: February 2016

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I’ve seen art journals before and lots of ideas for them on Pinterest lately so I decided to start one of my own. I have 2 entries so far. The 1st:

This is a little darker in the picture than it really is. I used oil pastels for the background. 2 different blues (blue & sky blue) and touch of purple. For the final touch, I used white to blend them together better. I loved the final result. I did this before bed last night. Then this morning I finished it. For the word, I just used white and purple soft pastel. There’s a hint of orange, which was a mistake, but ah well. I figured this isn’t bad for my 1st attempt at using oil pastels.

My 2nd entry I started before work this afternoon and just finished (just added the clouds and trees):

This time I used soft pastels for everything. This is another 1st for me. I’ve never used pastels (neither oil nor soft) before. 3 shades of blue for the sky, then white for a smoother blend and to lighten it up. For the snow, mainly white with a touch of gray and blue here and there. For the stream, I used the darker 2 blues that I used on the sky, a touch of green and outline it with gray. I thought it looked a bit too plain so I added a couple trees using a green colored pencil and a white pastel for the snow caps, and a white pastel for the clouds.

I got the idea for this when I was driving to work after last weekends blizzard. Being in ‘Amish country’ there’s a lot of farmland. I was passing a field, covered in snow (obviously) but the snow was untouched and there was a brilliant blue stream going through it. The blue against the white, and the fact it was all pure and untouched took my breath away momentarily. I couldn’t pull over to snap a picture, unfortunately. But I decided to try and recreate it using the soft pastel set I was given by a coworker and dying to attempt.

I’m looking forward to seeing improvements with my use of pastels (and in my art in general). Any tips or suggestions are always welcome. 🙂